About this project

$23,743

pledged of $11,000 goal

626

backers

Reminder:

We can take orders via PayPal.The button to do so is over at my blog, at this link, and we'll take orders there until the 15th of October, while we wait for paperwork from this campaign. These orders will count for the $25,000 goal of a random Gearchip for everyone.

Add-On Items are at the bottom of the page, and some comments on how they work are in this update. Basically, if you want some of the cool Add-On items we are offering, like the dice, coins or signed cards, you'll add money for them and tell us at the end of the project what that money is for

With the Rusty Tinker Deck unlocked now, please note that you can have all of the decks in your pledge of the base Tinker design or the Rusty Tinker design, or you can choose to get half of your order standard, half Rusty. You'll specify that in the survey at the end as well.

What

This Tinker Deck is a set of fully customized playing cards, inspired by steampunk designs and old machinery. I've infused all of the art in the deck with textures from photographs I took in the mining town of Eureka, Utah. There's just something fascinating about old, worn metals and machines. That photography trip inspired the Tinker Dice I designed, and really made this Tinker Deck come together.

All of the photos in this page are of the prototype cards I've had printed via ArtsCow.com and Zazzle.com, and the main image is something I whipped up from the source art.

If this campaign is successful, we'll ask the USPCC to print these in standard Bicycle stock with their traditional "Air Cushion" finish. Bicycle has already taken a look at the art for the cards, and is ready to print them, if we can get the order together. That's what the numbers are balanced around.

We're bringing this deck design to Kickstarter to see if we can get a sufficient order together to make the Bicycle print feasible. We'll make the design available at the end of the project either way, but we'd certainly love to get it out to everyone in Bicycle's top notch quality if possible.

News!

We've added some pledge tiers for our Canadian friends. Shipping on Kickstarter is an inefficient business, and it's costly to send physical items around the world. That said, we are able to get a better deal for Canadian shipping than the full international shipping, so that's what the new tiers are for.

We're happy to announce a collaboration with Epic Slant Press and their Havok & Hijinks card game!If you back both projects, for at least $11 here and $15 there, we will send you a treasure, a Tinker Dragon coin! (Concept art below, finals will be 39mm antiqued nickel and antiqued copper; the Havok & Hijinks crew will send out the nickel coins, and we'll send out the copper ones)

Why

There are a lot of custom playing card decks out there. Kickstarter itself is seeing a bit of a Renaissance in card designs, facilitated by this "crowdfunding" thing. When I designed the first version of this deck, I was just, well... tinkering. I do that in my spare time, using my decades of Photoshop and other art experience to whip up things that interest me. Some of them I wind up sharing. I wrote about it on my blog, and someone suggested I bring the cards to Kickstarter.

So, three versions of the deck later, fueled by research into what players and collectors are looking for, we're ready to offer the final version of the deck. It has symmetrical backs and faces, a blank "gaff" card and looks good in a fan spread. It will be offered in Bicycle standard cardstock and finish, the industry leaders for a reason. There's even a little bonus for the uncut sheets that they offer, since there's a bit of artistic real estate tucked between cards. We can also get Bicycle's name on the tuck box for that extra bit of flair.

Who

I am T. Eshelman, or more frequently, just Tesh. I am a happily married
father of four, technical artist and animator in the video game industry
by day, game designer, artist and photographer in my hobby time. I fit
the occasional blog post in as well, over at Tish Tosh Tesh.
I love machinery and I love to see how it ages over time. I have a
series of game components and games in mind that fit this Tinker theme,
like the Tinker Dice, and this is another piece of the puzzle. Good
machines are made of good parts, and I'm excited to see what we can
build.
Thank you for stopping by, and I look forward to hearing from you as
time goes on!

Rewards

Each pledge tier has at least one deck of the Tinker cards. It seems to be a bit of a tradition to offer signed decks, and I've been asked a few times what our plans are on that front. We're doing things a little differently: we're offering signed cards. As in, I'll open up a few decks, pick a card at random, and sign it. We'll slip it into a card sleeve and include it with your deck. You can get up to one of these for each deck you're ordering, for an Add On cost of $2 (just because it takes a bit of time).

We're also offering a tier built around an Uncut sheet of the cards. Some designers have offered these as add-on items, but we're going to bake them into a pledge instead so we can plan for shipping a little better. (Mockups included below, these are not final production plates from Bicycle.)

We would really like to get these to everyone by Christmas, but we can't promise it. We're estimating January on shipping, but we're going to do our best to get them shipped as soon as possible. This is why the campaign is a bit shorter than the usual 30 days, so we can finish up and get rolling as soon as possible.

We will also have some of the Tinker Dice available, but we will do those as Add-On items. As in that campaign, you can pick up a pair of Tinker Dice for $8, and/or a pair of Gearpunk Dice for $12. (So you can add up to 4 dice total.) All designs and finishes from that campaign will be available, except for the Pentagear Fudge dice, you just need to let us know what design and finish you want, if you order some. They will come in a bag that we have left over from that campaign. Other Add-On items are down a little further on the page.

Stretch Goals

One of the big things I'd really like to offer is a sister deck, a Rusty Tinker deck, where we age and dirty up the existing art to give it a bit more of an "antique" feel. I've been given to understand many players like to have two different but similar decks.

It will take us $20,000 to make both decks and get them shipped to us and then to you, so we're calling that a Stretch Goal instead of a baseline component of the campaign. We'd really love to get there and get both decks made and out to everyone.

If we do get the Rusty Tinker deck made, you won't need to change anything in your pledge. You may have all of your decks be one or the other type, or half of the standard Tinker and half Rusty Tinker. We'll sort out which you'd like in the surveys at the end of the project.

Add-On Items

We're doing a set of Add On items for those who may be so interested. This isn't something that Kickstarter support natively, so we're using BackerKit to make things work out. If you want Add On items (see what's available below), just click on the Manage Your Pledge button and add the requested amount to your pledge, and... that's it for now. You'll manage what you're actually getting at the end, when you answer the surveys that we send out to everyone when the project closes. The BackerKit system is pretty easy to use; you can check it out over at their website: https://www.backerkit.com

We've made a Gearpunk Gamer set (from the Tinker Dice campaign) of dice in a brand new finish available as an Add-On for $40. These will be new dice we order, which is why they weren't included in the limited number of sets we made available as specific pledge tiers. They will be finished in "Black Nickel", a nice dark color (sample coin with this finish below). As with those limited edition sets, these will come in a leather pouch.

As for other Add-Ons, we've made the Gearchip Sampler available for $7. These will be 39mm coins with the Tinker logo, as noted back in this update. They will come in five finishes, roughly correlating with the white, red, blue, green and black of standard poker chips, or as close as we can get with the metal platings available (anodized and dyed aluminum isn't an option at this point).

We'll also make a full set of 100 Gearchips available for $90. It will consist of 20 of each chip finish.

We've also designed a 2-inch Tinker Dealer Coin, available as an Add-On for $8/each in either Antiqued Nickel or Antiqued Copper. The concept art is as follows, though the final will look a little different due to bevel directions and some of the "grunge" details may not translate to 3D.

You can also pick up a few other oddments, like the signed card or spare decks. Again, these will all be in the BackerKit survey at project's end, so you don't need to select anything now in the Kickstarter system.

Add-On Infographics

Thank you all for your interest in the Tinker Deck! We're really looking forward to seeing how this all works out, and we'd love to hear from you!

Risks and challenges

The art is done and Bicycle is happy with the files, so there shouldn't be trouble there. If we get to the Rusty Tinker Deck, the art will require approval, but we'll get that done and approved as soon as possible. We'll need a bit of time to get everything prepped and sent, and human error might occur, but I'm careful and thorough, and I'll do as much as I can as soon as I can. There could always be troubles once the decks are en route, but again, those would be tied to random, unforseeable problems.

No, the signed cards are ones I'm taking from a few decks I'll open on the side. I'll take a random card, sign it, sleeve it, and include it with your deck(s). That way you'll have a sealed deck and a signature. You can request signed cards from either style of deck, but only as many as the number of decks you've ordered.

Support this project

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Pledge $1 or more
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Print-and-play PDFs or PNGs to make your own paper or cardstock Tinker Deck, though it will only be in greyscale. You can also chime in on stretch goals or any other sort of comment you'd like to offer in the project; we would love to hear from you!